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Marchers depart from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.
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Jabriel Hasan, a seminarian at Union Presbyterian Seminary, led the Unity March.
"We walk in the spirit; we walk with the spirit."
With these words, Union Presbyterian seminarian Jabriel Hasan began the meditative walk that took marchers from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture through the Museum District and back. It was a fitting introduction to a Friday night spent commemorating and celebrating the 57th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
The march was organized by Coming to the Table, a local community organization dedicated to creating conversations about race and the diversity of American experiences. The conversations, originally held across an actual dinner table (temporarily moved to Zoom), are meant to give citizens a chance to speak confidentially and openly about race, to listen to others' voices, to learn and to meet new people.
After the march, portions of King's famous speech were read on the steps of the VMHC building, and local leaders, including members of Coming to the Table, gave remarks,
"We have to fix some things that are terribly broken, not only in our system, but in our own spiritual and moral selves," said Danita Rountree, a co-founder of the group. "We need to figure out why we've been living the narrative of racism for generations. What Coming to the Table does is help people share what they've personally been through."
The seminarian Hasan also led a prayer for those whom he sees as still blinded by racial hatred. Though he is attending Presbyterian seminary, his views are informed by traditional Sufi spirituality. The message of unity, he said, can be found in all religions.
"You might have heard someone call themselves a Christian Buddhist. Well, what I've seen as I've studied theology is that the deeper you get into religions, the more you realize they have the same message," he explained. "Love."
The march was open to everyone and was well attended. Different marchers had different motivations for coming out.
David Abraham has been marching for civil rights since the 1960s.
David Abraham of Brooklyn, New York, marched in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and has attended some two dozen protests in the turbulent summer of 2020. He says his Jewish heritage is a personal link to the struggle of his fellow Americans.
"The great Jewish story begins in Egypt with 400 years of slavery," Abraham said. "It was in the 1960s that I came to understand and embrace my own Judaism. When I did, my connection with the Black experience was instinctual."
When asked why he was attending the event, Abraham called himself "one more body" and said he was doing what little he could for democratic institutions and free society. "Democracy requires citizenship," he said. "Citizenship means getting off your ass and showing up to support what you believe in."
Maggie Cawley rode her bike to the march from her nearby neighborhood. "You can't live in a community where certain people don't feel safe or welcome just because of their skin color," she said. "And if you want to show that you care, you have to participate."
There were no specific policy goals or platforms endorsed by Coming to the Table before or after the march. Instead, attendees were asked to reflect quietly on the lopsided and well-documented treatment of African Americans by the criminal justice system and police, the chief complaint among activists who say the Civil Rights Movement of King's era, though valiant and constructive, did not go far enough in securing freedom for Black Americans. The memory of several African-Americans unjustly slain in the past four months — Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — hung over the event. Hasan also invoked the name of Emmitt Till, a Black teenager tortured and killed in Mississippi on Aug. 28, 1955.
